Aaron Hartman, MD, outlines three ways to strengthen your immune response to COVID: lower inflammation through diet and supplements like olive oil and quercetin; optimize vitamin D to a target of 60-80 ng/mL, since 87% of COVID deaths occur in people with low levels; and fix endothelial dysfunction. He also notes that melatonin reduces inflammation and that sleeping eight hours instead of six cuts severe COVID risk in half.
Questions this video answers
87% (speaker claim).
60–80 ng/mL (speaker-stated target).
4,000–5,000 IU per day (adult maintenance suggestion).
Children over 6: 1,000–2,000 IU/day; children under 6: 1,000 IU/day (speaker guidance).
83% (speaker claim).
Chapters
All right, this is part three in the three part series of why kids don't get Covid quite as severe as adults. And what can you do to actually help boost your immune system and be ready, have an immune system like a kid. That's the point. Okay, so we talked about part one, why do kids get less severe Covid. We talked in part two, why do adults get more severe Covid. And this is based on research that has been coming out in the last year as well, an article that's attached below. Part of part three is what can you do about it? Okay, so the first thing is to decrease your inflammation, which seems pretty obvious. Well, how do you decrease inflammation? This inflammaging thing where you get inflammation and you age more rapidly, you're more prone to aging related things. How do you decrease that? Well, there's four major ways to leverage to decrease your inflammation. The first is to remove processed foods. Half of all chronic disease in our country can be directly related to eating processed foods. The orals in these processed foods are incredibly inflammatory. Hydrogenated orals, Crisco, margarine, all these things actually make it easier for viral infections to actually get in your body. There's a lot of interesting emerging data with people with inflammation in cell membranes. It's easier for viruses to hop from cell to cell to cell. If you have very healthy, flexible cell membranes that come from eating healthy fats, your cells can sense infection better and cut them off of the past, so to speak. So just removing these processed orals, soy oil, canola oil, any of these things, not eating out as much help lower your risk for a severe infection. Processed sugars, which are pretty much in everything, high fructose, corn syrup, corn solids, dextrose, table sugar, all these things increase inflammation extremely. And interesting, when you eat sugars, it actually affects the microbiome in your GI tract. So we didn't, we're not going to mention the microbiome as one of the major things, the leverage points today because everything you do, diet, processed foods, sugars, vitamin D status, we'll talk about melatonin, all these things actually affect your microbiome. So just by eating better foods, just by eating less sugars, removing processed oils, you have a better microbiome. And over the way of note, there's a lot of great data about extra virgin olive oil has a great anti inflammatory modulating effect on the gut microbiome. So even though olive oil is not an essential oil oral, it has oleic acid, these omega 9s that we don't need, it's a very, very potent anti inflammatory oil that has this anti aging effect. And lastly, how else do we decrease inflammation? Certain supplements like quercetin, green tea, vitamin C and nac. Also vitamin D lowers inflammation, but we're going to talk about that because that's like the most important nutrient. If you want more information about these supplements, dosing, et cetera, those can be found on our website. We have a Covid survival guide there as well as a Covid cheat sheet that will dose these for you and tell you how to change the doses based on if you're acutely infected versus if you're trying to prevent infection. Next one is vitamin D status. 87% of people who die with COVID have a low vitamin D. So it just makes sense. Get your vitamin D up. 9 out of 10 people who die with this have low vitamin D. Optimal range is between 60 and 80. So the ideal thing is just to get your level checked and take some vitamin D to get it into that ideal range. If you haven't had your blood level checked yet, taking four to 5,000 units a day in adults is a safe maneuver. In kids over 6, 1 to 2000 units a day is a safe. And if you're less than 6,1000 units a day is a safe dose. This is something that the majority of Americans are deficient in. Black, Asians, minority ethnic groups in our country, 83% of them are deficient in D. So we just, we just need it. Next, endothelial dysfunction. So how can you affect this thing, this lining of every artery in your body, Diet, supplements and controlling your predisposing factors. So diet. You know, it's interesting how one of the things that can affect endothelial dysfunction or these abnormal skin cells in your arteries is actually healthy oils like olive oil, omega 3s are a great sort of great anti inflammatory. Cutting out sugars, not eating processed foods. One thing that's a great great big inflammatory food in our our diets are grains. The top three foods are actually grains, dairy and sugars. So if you just want to do a basic anti inflammatory diet, you would remove those things. There are supplements that can help with endothelial dysfunction like vitamin C, trace minerals, zinc, selenium, Vitamin D actually helps with it as well. Quercetin, nac, garlic is another great anti inflammatory. Phytosterols. These are basically the colors in plants. So eating more colorful foods, your blues, your greens, your oranges, your yellows, or taking some kind of carotenoid, lutein, zeaxanthin kind of supplement as well can help with inflammation and then controlling your underlying predisposing factors as best you can. This is more difficult because someone who's had diabetes has likely had for years or someone who's overweight has likely had for years. But it's amazing if you address the inflammation and you remove the processed foods about patients who've had massive weight loss simply from removing sugar processed foods. One of the things I recommend with Lamar diabetics is to do miniature interval fasting where they don't eat for 12 hours a day. Now I would only do this under a physician's supervision because if you're on insulin you gotta be super careful. But that episodic fast is a huge, has a huge anti inflammatory effect. The typical person who's relatively healthy can do interval fasting without any physician supervision. But if you have a underlying health condition, you should definitely check in with your doctor or your provider before you try to do that. And last but not least is melatonin. Melatonin is a super powerful, super potent anti inflammatory. Taking 5mg a day can be a great preventive step for an adult. And if you get sick, taking up to 10 milligrams a day is really huge. Something else that melatonin actually helps is the quality of sleep. And it's interesting. If you get eight hours of sleep versus, I'm sorry, if you get six hours of sleep versus eight hours of sleep, you have about 50% increased risk for severe COVID 19. That's kind of interesting. So just getting two extra hours of sleep, going from six hours of sleep to eight hours of sleep can decrease your risk for severe COVID 19. And oh, by the way, that's going to help with your melatonin levels. So hopefully this will helpful. We have a full Covid survival guide that's available on our website as well as some quick tips that are available for for download on our website as well on social media. Please stay tuned. If you like these videos, put comments below, share with your family and friends. The only way to get this information out there is for people to share it. So we encourage you to do that if you feel like it's been helpful. Everybody take care, be safe and be well.
